Amazon's voice assistant Alexa can now whisper, bleep and even change pitch

NEW YORK: In a bid to provide more natural voice experience, Amazon has introduced new "Speech Synthesis Markup Language"(SSML) features to its voice assistantAlexa that allows it to whisper, bleep and even change its pitch.

SSML is a standardised markup language that allows developers to control pronunciation, intonation, timing and emotion.

"We are excited to announce five new SSML tags in the US, Britain and Germany that you can use with Alexa, including whispers, expletive bleeps and more," the company said in a statement.

SSML support on Alexa allows users to control how Alexa generates speech from their skill's text responses. Developers can add pauses, change pronunciation, spell out a word and add short audio snippets.

Amazon is set to host a webinar on May 18 on the new code, that will give a more clear idea on SSML.